∞

On Top Social Media Referral Traffic Sources

YouTube is a sleeping giant—it’s not just a TikTok competitor or a Netflix competitor or a search competitor or a Spotify competitor.

SEO as we know it is about the change dramatically. How do you keyword stuff for an LLM? How do you get discovered via chat but not give away all your content? How many search channels do you optimize for in a post-10 blue links world?

Just remember, don’t go out and try ramping up the top 4 or 6 or 10 right away. Find the channels that match your abilities, align with your brand approach, and are actually a place you want to invest your time.

Being everywhere rarely helps.
Being engaged where your audience is always helps.

see this post on LinkedIn

∞

What We Can Learn from Bad CEO Quotes

The CEOs of Kellogg and Wendy’s recently caused a bit of public outcry.

From the Kellogg end:

We’ve got to reach the consumer where they are, so we’re advertising about cereal for dinner. If you think about the cost of cereal for a family versus what they might otherwise do, that’s going to be much more affordable.

Meanwhile, at Wendy’s:

Beginning as early as 2025, we will begin testing more enhanced features like dynamic pricing and daypart offerings

(That’s fancy talk for surge pricing.)

Shockingly, customers (or at least social media users) didn’t love these statements.

But those customers (and social media users) weren’t the target audiences. These were said for Wall Street—intended to juice stock prices, not excite customer bases.

Just like with supply chains a couple years ago, inflation and interest rates and market prices are hot topics right now. Which means a wider audience for statements like these—wider than the CEOs may be used to.

Contrast these statements with this approach from a CEO used to being in the public eye:

You can be sure this was intended to double as a call to investors about the quality and positioning of Meta’s VR product compared to Apple. Just like how “internal” memos at tech giants are written with the understanding that they’ll be leaked and become very much external memos.

So, uh, why am I quoting CEOs?

These statements (and the ensuing backlash) highlight that words and messaging matter.

People feeling the pinch of the highest food prices in 30 years don’t want to hear a CEO making millions of dollars a year say that people should eat his company’s cereal for dinner because it’s affordable.

Thanks to Uber and similar services employing surge pricing, “surge” or “dynamic” pricing feels negative because it usually means more expensive. I’ll quote Tyler Cowen because he covers everything I would have said:

I predict this will fail. For one thing, “we will have discounts for Tuesdays at 3 p.m.” would have been better marketing. Furthermore, many Wendy’s buyers are not wealthy, and they care a good deal about predictable prices.

(They even botched the walk back.)

Once you say something in public, you can’t guarantee which audience(s) receive it. The larger you become (in notoriety, headcount, etc) the fewer private communication channels you have.

Your content matters. And that content is a combination of words and tone.

Respect your customers. Choose your words. Earn trust & don’t burn it.

∞

Tuesday Marketing Links | 031924

IN AN ERA OF COLLABORATION SATURATION, HOW DO BRANDS STAND OUT?

71% of people agree that the story you tell around a collaboration is just as important as the final product.

Every market is saturated now.

How’s your story?

When influencer overexcitement backfires

Overexcited language (e.g. “LOVE THIS!”) increases engagement for micro-influencers by 38% but reduces it for macro-influencers by 31%.
…
Generally, we’re suspicious if it looks like someone’s trying to persuade us. When content is informative, rather than promotional, it builds trust and makes us less suspicious that it’s an attempt to persuade us.

People are advertising savvy these days, respect that.

Consumers spend more with digital wallets

Consumers who use digital wallets spend 31% more than non-users across a range of categories

The disparity in wallet use across income brackets suggests that—at least in part—larger digital wallet sales are the product of digital wallet users having more disposable income than non-users.

The more abstracted the transfer of money becomes, the easier it is to spend.

Facebook is reviving one of its earliest features after hiding it for years

Facebook is bringing back the Poke, and, apparently, Gen Z is loving it.

Maybe the biggest trend really is nostalgia for a slightly earlier time.

∞

As technology advanced we became increasingly more like computers—adapting to their way of working, of interfacing.

The promise of AI is that could open up the path to allow us to become more human again.

∞

Monday Marketing Links | 031824

Cookie Deprecation is Coming - Should Advertisers be Worried?

Apple blocked third party cookies for 100% of traffic back in 2020, and most brands see almost half of their traffic from Safari (!!!) So that impact has already been felt for a while now.
…
as long as you’re using ad platforms platforms (Google, Meta, TikTok, Email/SMS) and aren’t super reliant on display networks, there likely won’t be a major impact.
…
building out a CDP, beefing up first-party data capture, etc. Those are considered best practices anyway, and will become even more beneficial with all of the privacy changes on the horizon and beyond.

Cookies crumbled a while ago, Chrome phasing out third-party cookies is just the final nail in the crumb filled coffin.

Survey: Retailers should focus on loyalty, brand awareness

The vast majority of retailers believe that their customer experience is at or better than their peers, but new data says otherwise.
…
The top three strategic outcomes experienced retailers should be focused on, according to IDC and SAP, are improving customer loyalty (59%), improving brand awareness (50%), and empowering employees with the right data and tools (43%) to improve the customer experience.

Everyone thinks they’re above average, but that’s not how average works. And there’s usually room for improvement regardless.

Customer experience is a moat. The better the experience, the bigger the moat.

Big Tech accounts for nearly two-thirds of the US digital ad market

Big Tech (Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft) will attract nearly two-thirds of US digital ad dollars this year

That’s more than double its share since we began tracking it in 2008.

LinkedIn plans to add gaming to its platform

boost the time people are spending on the platform, the company is breaking into a totally new area: gaming.
…
tapping into the same wave of puzzle-mania that helped simple games like Wordle find viral success
…
one idea LinkedIn appears to be experimenting with involves player scores being organised by places of work, with companies getting “ranked” by those scores.

Taking a page out of the old Facebook playbook and reinventing Solitaire for the browser-first workforce.

Money Stuff: Slorg is Sorry He Burnt Slerf

Basically the way crypto works is that a guy named Slorg makes up a token named Slerf, which is distinguished from other tokens by having a cartoon sloth logo. You send $10 million of Solana crypto tokens to Slorg, and he makes a note to himself that he owes you some Slerfs. Then he accidentally flushes that note down the toilet and, due to the irreversible nature of the blockchain, you get no Slerfs and your money is permanently gone, though Slorg is very sorry.

And now we know how crypto works!

mistake was very good for attention, and attention is the true value of any memecoin. So the obvious thing happened and the new tokens that were released shot up around 5,000%.